Talk:Howard Wolowitz/@comment-31.217.39.247-20141231120040
I honestly think that Howard is very misunderstood character. I read lots of comments (mostly written by the type of feminists who consider the whole show to be sexist but still) accusing Howard of being mysoginistic, jerk, abusing women with his comments and pick up lines... I just never saw it that way. First, I don't think Howard ever said something actually offensive. What he would say was his way of showing interest in a certain woman by complimenting on her physical feautures. It was often poorly worded but that was his way of showing interest, trying to start a conversation. One or two lines like that don't mean that he was seeing women as nothing else but sex objects and thought that their looks are the only thing good about them. Some women may interpert it as such, but almost anything somebody says can be considered an insult by a particular person, it depends on the person's mood, prior experiences, personality, ecetera. That doesn't mean that it was meant to be an insult, or that it could even be legally classified as such. I am sure that some women were offended by his pick up lines. Some were not get offended by that but simply found his appearence creepy and didn't give him a chance. And some found that appealing and gave him a chance. After all, he did get lucky a few times and I doubt that he would keep that tactic for years if it never worked. But there is no way he could've known what would happen, how would a person feel about that, before saying it first. Also, he would try that, say a few lines like that, and after making sure that particular woman he was hitting on wasn't interested, he would move on. The episode where he is hiting on Missy, as well as the one where he is going with Raj and Leonard to bar hoping to pick up woman, shows that. Also, after he would actually get a chance to go on a date with a woman, start a relationship with her, he was able to form it without making sleazy comments or solely basing it on sex. So his pick up lines were nothing more than a way to provoke a reaction or an interest from a woman he was interested in, not the way he was treating women all the time, his only way to communicate with them. Also, I believe that he was hitting on woman that way because A) he didn't know better since father abandoned him when he was little and, being a nerd, he obviously didn't have much friends with such experience either B) as revealed in The Killer Robot Instability, when he did try to be cute and romantic, it would get him nothing but humiliation and rejection. Also, as it was clearly shown in that episode and in the episode where Leslie broke up with him, and evident in his later relationship with Bernadette, that although he was very fond of sex and had nothing against one night stands and things like that, he actually wanted, liked being in an actual stable romantic relationship with another. The only exception was Penny. He really went too far with her, constantly hitting on her, to the point that it really was offensive and disrespectful, so her speech to him in The Killer Robot Instability was necessary-but only up to "growing old and dying alone" part! That was way too cruel and unnecessary. Not to mention the punch later. But still, he learned that he shouldn't treat her that way. And he improved a lot in later seasons, and his behavior, when actually wrong, wasn't shown as justified on the show. And him going too far with Penny is not a proof of him treating all the women that way. He probably wasn't even aware how much he was offending Penny (not that it makes it right). About some people going as far to consider him a borderline rapist. Since sitcoms are TV shows where subjects like rape, misogyny etc. will probably never be discussed, sleazy pick up lines are as close to a sex crime or sexual harassment as it can get. But that doesn't make sitcom world the whole other world where that is the worst kind of sex crime possible, or a sex crime at all. It is still nothing more than a pick up line, often sleazy or poorly worded, bug just that. Only because sitcoms shy away from exploring such serious things doesn't mean that slightly wrong things that they do feature and explore should be seen as a a substitute for that, that Howard should be hurt or thrown into jail. There are many great non sitcom TV shows that managed to deal with such subjects in a mature manner, such as Elementary and Oz. Also, using sleazy pick up lines as a comic relief is not advocating mysogyny, especially when those lines are only used by Howard to provoke a reaction and are not funny because of the way they are adressed to women, but because of the shear randomness that they are. I agree that he would never hurt woman, or anyone else. Howard could have tried to take advantage of Penny when she was asleep in The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization, but he didn't. He could have assaulted Stephanie when she was alone with him in the control room, but he didn't. As a Criminal Minds fan I can tell you that making sleazy pick up lines is not the warning sign that would point to an evolving sex offender. And when sex offenders do throw sleazy pick up lines at women, they don't get depressed like Howard did in The Killer Robot Instability when a woman tells them off in an aggressive way like Penny did to Howard. They instead turn violent and in the best case throw just as bad insults back at her. So the ones who say that he is a borderline rapist don't have facts straight. So, bottom line: Howard in early seasons was kinda sleazy, maybe even a pervert, and jerk at times, albeit mostly unitentionally, but not a creep and definitely not a borderline sex offender, and he doesn't deserve so many hateful comments that hundreds of people are posting about him all over the Internet, even now when he had improved.